


Five Ways in which Frederick the Great and Maria Theresia did not meet

by Selena



Category: 18th Century CE Frederician RPF, 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: Alternate History, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Enemies, Keep Your Enemies Closer, Misses Clause Challenge, Multi, My Best Enemy, Rivalry, Seven Years' War, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21573508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selena/pseuds/Selena
Summary: 1740: Two young monarchs ascend to the throne: Frederick II of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria.  Over the next few decades, the rivalry between them will change Europe forever. Yet they never meet face to face. But there were five times in their lives when they might have done...
Relationships: Franz Stephan von Lothringen | Francis I Holy Roman Emperor/Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Other(s), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte, Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria & Joseph II, Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria / Franz Stephan von Lothringen ×
Comments: 41
Kudos: 40
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. I.  Vienna, 1731

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raspberryhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/gifts).



> **Thanks to** : Kathyh, braving a new fandom with me by beta-reading this story. 
> 
> **Warnings** : For historical deaths, misogyny and backstory abuse.

He hadn't wasted much time on wondering what she was like. She was his key to freedom, and that was that. Getting out of Küstrin was all that had mattered, getting out of Prussia, away from his father for good. Getting into a position which not only made it impossible for his father to ever subject Fritz to his will again but would, in fact, end up in making Fritz his father's superior, depending on how long the old man intended to live.

There was some humiliation in this particular escape plan, true. If Fritz thought his father's brand of Protestant devotion was constricting and ill becoming a monarch, not to mention hypocritical in his father, he had only contempt for the Catholicism the House of Habsburg indulged in. Superstitious nonsense they had used to enslave half of Europe, and much of the Americas. And yet he had to convert, to bend his knees to Rome; that had been the one unnegotiable position. No archduchess without a conversion. Especially not this archduchess, whose husband would, in all likelihood, succeed her father as ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, for she had no living brother.

"He'd gainsay his faith as well as his father, would he, villain?" his father had thundered, but in the end had given in. He could not do otherwise, not after all the insistence of being his Emperor's most loyal ally and vassal. Not with his greedy heart leaping at the thought of a Hohenzollern, a member of the House of Brandenburg, so scorned by the rest of Europe as pretentious upstarts, marrying into the family that had held the Imperial throne in its hands for the last few centuries. Even if that Hohenzollern was his most despised son.

 _I played you like my flute_ , Fritz thought, but the sense of triumph about his gamble paying off was shot through with bitterness. If he'd thought of it just one year earlier, Katte would still have been alive. With an effort, he pushed the memory aside, hid it in the back of his mind where it was always lurking, always reminding him that every breath he now took should have been shared by the man who'd died for him. Because of him.

  
_I die for you with a thousand joys._

Fritz had to live now, and not just live. Triumph, in the end. Make it all worth while. And if the means to this lay in marrying some Habsburg princess, going through some ridiculous rituals and playing the Popish fool for a while, then so be it.

He even went through the court etiquette her father the Emperor had brought with him from Spain, those three genuflections that presumably gave the Emperor his sense of importance. As if the Habsburgs had produced a single man worth respecting in at least two centuries. His own father was a monster, but Fritz wouldn't hate him so much if he didn't also admire him with the furious awe of one who could see what Friedrich Wilhelm had done - carved the most impressive army of continental Europe out of Brandenburg sand and a tiny kingdom with no riches, filled his treasury where other princes knew only how to spend, created an administration so efficient that raised taxes all those larger states could only stare at in envy. What were the Habsburgs by comparison? Creaky old skeletons in puffy costumes.

"Welcome, my son," the Emperor said, after Fritz had performed his last genuflection and pressed his lips to the Emperor's hand. "Now let me introduce your bride." He gestured, but not to any of the women standing somewhat below his throne. Instead, he pointed over Fritz' shoulder , and Fritz turned around.

Musicians started to play, and he couldn't help but feel slightly less contemptuous of the Austrians. They had, it seemed , at least some decent violinists. They also had a sense of theatre, for behind him, a gigantic white shell had hastily been brought in, and out of it stepped, dressed up in an orgy of white and gold satin, a girl who looked a good four or five years younger than he was. She did not curtsey, as singers usually did when facing royalty. Instead, she raised her arms and began to sing.

"My daughter, your wife," the Emperor said proudly, for Fritz and she and been married in absentia, with members of their respective families standing in. Another precondition of the Austrians; they had to be sure his father would not at the last moment rescind permission. "Maria Theresia."

Well. She had a clear soprano voice, evidently trained. Which _her_ father seemed not to have a problem with, instead observing this display with pride. Fritz thought of all the secret, stolen hours practicing his flute while Wilhelmine played her lute, his sister of sisters whom he would not see again for years, and did not know whether he hated this girl he was now married to for that alone. Or whether the thought of the Prussian Ambassador describing to his father in a soon to be written letter just how the latest member of the House of Hohenzollern had introduced herself filled Fritz with so much glee that what he felt for the arch duchess right now might well develop into fondness.

Then he started to listen to what she was actually singing. It took him a while, for his Italian could be better, but then he could place the tune. She sang, this bride of his, a tune of cruelly lost love, putting longing into it that did not seem pure artifice. What did she know of love, this child? Of loss? No one had killed her love in front of her now, had they. If she had held some fancy for some Austrian noble, what was that to Fritz?

But she sang well, and despite himself, he found himself moved. Wilhelmine had managed to get a hold of his flute, confiscated like everything else by their father, and send it to him, though their father had forbidden their reunion, had not even let them say goodbye before Fritz had left Prussia. Double reason to keep the flute with him, near his heart. He pulled it out now, and when the music ceased, he put it on his lips and played.

  
He had done so a few times, a very few times at a court, his mother's court in Monbijou, but otherwise solely surrounded by servants, or the few people he truly cared for in this world. Never in front of a foreign court, where they doubtless considered him the son of a heretic and barbarian King. _You can do anything you truly want to do_ , Katte had told him at Zeithain. _I truly believe that_ , and Fritz had loved him then, and never stopped. He played now and the strangers fell away, the Viennese court with its air of overripe splendour and unearned glory. He played, and life made sense again. No more father now. A few empty Latin words were hardly a price for this freedom.

When he ended, the Emperor applauded, and so did the court. The arch duchess, he noted, did not. Yet she came towards him, instead of waiting till he approached her. Seen close, she had regular features, but her blue eyes were sightly swollen. So she either had cried, or she drank. Her mother, a fat creature whose breath he had smelled earlier when being introduced, undoubtedly did the later.

"Your Grace is a superb musician," the archduchess said. Her speaking voice was clear as well, her French, the language of all civilised courts, fluent and elegant. "I would have wished, though, that you would have waited. I had a second aria prepared for you."

Was she scolding him? Yes, that was definitely amusement he felt now.

"The first one was not for me, then?" he asked. She didn't blush or look away. Instead, she regarded him intently, as if taking her measure of him.

"No more than you just played for me, cousin," she returned. "But now that we've heard what the other can do, I think we might manage some music together. If I tell you the tune, do you feel up to the task?"

  
 _You did not just challenge me_ , Fritz thought. _Who do you think you are?_

His wife, apparently. Well, then. At the very least, this meant the next few years until her father left this earth and thus made him ruler of an Empire in dire need of reform that would be his task to mould would not be boring.

  
He looked into her eyes again. Seckendorff, trying to win favour once he realised this was one marriage that was going to happen, had told Fritz they were of a "most pleasing, soft blue".

Nonsense, Fritz thought now. She might have a round, doll like face and be dressed like a porcellain figurine, but there was a cool steely quality there that put him in mind of ice. Or his own eyes, staring at him from the mirror.

"Your grace," he said, "let us put it to the test."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Footnote: After his attempted flight and the execution of his friend Hans Herrmann von Katte, Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia was imprisoned at Küstrin. As one of the ways to achieve his freedom, he did indeed suggest marrying the Archduchess Maria Theresia, but his father Friedrich Wilhelm, horrified at the idea of his son becoming a Catholic, vehemently refused. Friedrich did later regain his freedom through a marriage of his father's choice, to Maria Theresia's cousin Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Bevern.


	2. Emskirchen, 1745

Travelling by carriage across the Empire had very limited charms, and when one was six months pregnant, next to none. But a coronation was a powerful incentive. Not her own coronation. Maria Theresia had had no intention of putting herself through yet another medieval ritual if she could avoid it, having been crowned as Queen of Hungary already, Archduchess of Austria by birthright, Queen of Bohemia by acclamation. But she'd needed this last one for her husband. 

_No woman shall rule on Salic lands._ All of Europe had sworn to support the "Pragmatic Sanction", as her late father the Emperor had called the compromise he'd come up with to circumvent the Salic law barring women from the succession. Maria Theresia would inherit, while her husband would rule. All of Europe had sworn, and all of Europe had broken that promise. Starting with him. The other young monarch ascending to the throne five years ago, the one who had a standing army and a well filled treasury at his disposal, and, so it had quickly become apparent, no scruples whatsoever. 

The new King of Prussia had invaded Silesia, taking her richest province as if it was his due, and then they'd all attacked, from every side, France and Spain most of all. They'd expected her to surrender and be lucky if she ended up as Countess of Tyrol once they were done. As for the German princes, they'd fallen in line with the French and chosen her cousin of Bavaria as the next Emperor, and then they'd cast a greedy eye at the Austrian heartlands. After all, her husband, the husband of her choice, was not a military man. And she was a woman. Little was expected of him. Of her, nothing at all. 

Well, they'd been wrong. Five years later, and she still hadn't managed to get Silesia back, but the French had been defeated, Spain had withdrawn, and as for the ursurping Emperor, she'd taken his home province from him and forced him to live in exile. When he'd died at the start of this year, she'd seen her chance. His son was practical; he'd wanted Bavaria back, had withdrawn any claim to the Imperial throne and promised to cast his vote for her husband Franz Stephan as Emperor. Where he'd led, the other princes electors had followed. All but one. 

Maria Theresia had neither expected nor needed the vote of the Prussian King by then. But it was not a little gratifying to send a formal invitation for him to attend the imperial coronation at Frankfurt, she had to admit. She was by now twenty eight, and mother of six children, pregnant a seventh time, and pregnant women were allowed to indulge themselves every now and then. 

She didn't expect him to be there. He was too busy fighting her troops for Silesia. Then again, she hadn't expected to meet his favourite sister, either, and yet she was about to, on her way to Frankfurt, in Emskirchen. A tiny town in the tiny principality of Bayreuth which she had chosen to stop and have lunch in, and there she was, the Margravine Wilhelmine, Prussian Princess married off to a Franconian noble as a punishment for her part in her brother's attempted flight from their father the soldier king. Maria Theresia's father the Emperor had been among the European rulers pitying the young man and telling his father to have mercy back then. They'd all asked for Friedrich's life, little knowing who he'd turn out to be. No one had asked anything for the sister. 

"Your grace," Maria Theresia said, beckoning the Margravine to come closer. It was a late September day, drowsy and warm, and while her lunch had been supposed to take place at the posting station, the inn called "Golden Deer", she'd impulsively decided to eat outside and have her people and the inn keeper rustle up tables and chairs in the garden, ignoring protests that there would be no way to protect her face from the sun, no baldachins, no proper splendour. 

"There'll be enough of that in Frankfurt," she'd said, and presiding over what resembled nothing as much as a hastily improvised picnic, she'd started to receive the local dignitaries who'd been notified of her arrival well ahead of time. 

The Margravine was perhaps a bit taller than Maria Theresia when standing, and, Maria Theresia thought without envy, currently much thinner. She moved well, evidently having gone through the same drill most princesses had to, dropping into a curtsey that stopped just this short of an actual genuflection. Maria Theresia decided to let it go. Spanish court etiquette was a cumbersome, time wasting thing, and she'd cut it down to just one obeisance anyway. Besides, her quarrel had never been with the sister. 

"I am your grateful guest," she said, for Emskirchen was Bayreuth territory, "and ask only for two hours of rest. Then I will trouble you no more." 

She expected the Margravine to reply with some platitude about how receiving the soon to be Empress was no trouble but an honor, which would have been a lie. Politeness required _some_ member of the Bayreuth court to attend their sovereign passing through, true, but by coming herself, the Margravine was bound to incur the wrath of her brother. Trouble indeed. 

"Your royal highness," the Margravine instead replied, rising, "I should like to ask for more than two hours. I would like to ask for a truce, and my sovereign's word that any guest who has arrived here will depart in safety."

The hair on Maria Theresia's neck rose, and she felt a chill running down her spine. By now, she'd developed an instinct for danger. And while she travelled with an escort, she had no army with her. The war was far from here. Last she'd heard, the Prussians were in Bohemia. 

None of these thoughts stopped her from smiling. She'd grown rather good at it, especially when facing threats. 

"As I _am_ your sovereign," she returned in her most gracious tone, "you have my word. No one who owes me fealty will attack anyone who comes and leaves in peace." 

She did not ask for a similar pledge regarding her own safety. Men, especially Hungarian nobles, were flattered if you implied you needed their knightly protection. Women were different. If the Margravine intended to betray her, displaying calm confidence might make her hesitate, and if she didn't, she still would respect that more than any play at womanly weakness, being bound to be familiar with these strategies herself. 

"Then, by your highness' leave," Wilhelmine of Prussia said, turning half around to signal one of the gentlemen who were escorting her, "I would like to introduce the Count of Rheinsberg to you."

She'd never seen him before in person, but she'd been given enough descriptions to be sure of his identity now that he came closer. Besides, the context made his person unmistakable. There was some physical resemblance to the Margravine to mark them as family, too, though nothing as pronounced as her own family's lip and chin. 

"Count," Maria Theresia said icily. 

There was no murmuring among her attendants, so they hadn't caught on yet. She might have to exchange them after Frankfurt. If there would still be a Frankfurt for her. Yes, there were rules for these kind of encounters, even among lethal enemies. But he'd proved, again and again, that he ignored any rule, any law, if it stood in the way of him getting what he wanted. 

She kept smiling, and stretched out her hand. For a moment, he looked puzzled.

"Has the Count not been educated in Spanish Court Etiquette?" Maria Theresia asked sweetly. 

"Oh, I have," he said. "But I was told it only applied to the Emperor. Who is not here. Nonetheless," he briefly bent over her hand, without bothering to kneel first, "it is, of course, a privilege to greet the Queen of Hungary. " 

By now, her attendants had belatedly registered who the Count of Rheinsberg had to be. She'd got rid of most of her father's ancient councillors who had trouble wrapping their minds around any concept that had not been tried out a hundred times in hundreds of years; of her people, she expected more. There _were_ murmurs now, and one or two scrapings of metal . This would not do. 

She withdrew her hand, and rose, ignoring the faint wave of sickness. This was her seventh pregnancy, and she knew what her body would and would not let her do. 

"Walk with me, Count," she said. One of his eyebrows rose. 

"So trusting to a stranger, Your Highness?"

"While the Margravine here rests with my people," Maria Theresia said softly. "She looks pale, and in need of some refreshment."

Now the look he gave her was murderous. So he did care for his sister, at least enough not to wish to see her as a hostage. Well, it had been his choice to come here, as it was hers now to risk taking a stroll on the arm of her worst enemy. 

Her husband had met him once, and been rather taken by him. But then Franzl was an amiable man, and so most people could not help but be amiable in his presence. Like most young nobleman, he'd been on a Grand Tour through Europe, stopping by in Prussia where the Crown Prince had managed to regain his freedom by agreeing to marry his father's choice for him, her mother's niece, Elisabeth Christine. Franz Stephan had attended the engagement party before leaving for the Netherlands. 

She ordered everyone to remain where they were, put her left hand on his right arm and considered herself fortunate not to be constricted by the robes she had to wear during the holidays. One could hardly move in full ornate state costume. He was out of uniform as well, otherwise she'd have noticed him earlier. Instead, he looked like an average nobleman in French fashion, not tall for a man, which meant they were practically eye to eye. While they walked away from the inn, she wondered where his own escort was hidden. She doubted he relied on his sister's attendants for his own safety. Or maybe he didn't care, either way. He was, after all, the only ruler in Europe to personally lead his troops into battle. 

Sometimes she resented being unable to do the same. 

"I was hoping to find your husband here, Your Highness," he said. "To renew our old aquaintance." 

"You would be able to do this in Frankfurt," Maria Theresia retorted, "where you know very well my husband _the Emperor_ already is. Do not take me for a fool, cousin, and as you've come here, do not waste our time. "  
His voice, until now studiously neutral, now grew harsh. "I came because my sister asked. She knew I'd take a meeting between the both of you as a betrayal, and she has some delusion as to your finer feelings and longing for peace. Whereas I, Madame, do take you to be many things. But, I admit, not for a fool." 

Indeed, she thought. She'd never needed spies to find out what he thought of her; he'd shared it freely with the general public, quip for quip. "The Apostolic bitch", "the Austrian whore", "she must stink of diapers all the time". But foolish, no, foolish was the one thing he hadn't called her. 

"How very gallant of you," she said wryly. "As for my finer feelings, they were and are those of an owner aiming at retrieving her stolen property. "

"And here I thought you were such a good Christian." Until now, they had conversed in French, the language of the courts and, as she knew, his preferred idiom in any case. Now he amazed her by abruptly switching to German. "Who loves gold will never be fed by it, and who loves riches will not be able to use them. For all is vain." 

Maria Theresia stared at him. She had only ever heard those words in Latin, but she did recognize them at once; Ecclesiastes 5,9. Abruptly, she remembered that this man, who courted atheists and mocked the faithful, had been raised by a deeply religious father, Calvinist heretic or not. 

He gave her a sardonic smile.

"I see," she said, now speaking German as well. It had been the language of her beloved nurse, and so she spoke it like the Viennese did, half singing, while his own pronounciation had been that of the north, clipped and hard. "Well, while I always thought that it was vanity which drew you to Silesia, I am surprised at you admitting it." 

"It is a shame that you would never receive Voltaire", he said, sounding amused despite himself and returning to French. "I would enjoy watching. But be that as it may, Madame, let us be clear now: the war is going badly for you. Again. Your troops are losing. Again. Come now, you are a realist. You must be aware you don't have a general who can match me, and while your troops are in a better state than they were when you came to the throne, they're still not nearly as capable as mine." 

"Is that so? I seem to recall that Field Marshal Traun removed you and your troops from Bohemia and Moravia last year without losing a single Austrian soldier. I did not give him the order of the Golden Fleece because he looks dashing with it, Monsieur. He _is_ your match, and vain or not, it would suit your own reputation to admit it." 

Traun had stopped the series of Prussian victories by avoiding open battle and instead forcing a series of marches on them that exhausted them, threatened to cut off their supply lines entirely and in the end, made Friedrich withdraw. 

"Granted," he said now. "Granted. Traun is your one master strategist. But he can't be everywhere, and he's not in Bohemia now, is he? You had to use him at the French border to guarantee your husband's coronation." 

Unfortunately, this was true. Traun had managed to push the French back across the Rhine, but the price for that was that her brother-in-law was now commanding in Bohemia, and while she liked Franzl's little brother just fine, he was no Traun. 

She felt the child move inside her, and had to stop walking for a moment. No, she did not wish to be a man. But she did wish she'd been taught military strategies as a child, and how to command armies.

"As this coronation appears to be so important to you," her enemy said, "I must confess I am surprised you stopped at having your husband crowned, Madame. Why not have him put a crown on your own head as well, now that you've managed to convince enough German princes to do your bidding?" 

"No woman shall rule in Salic lands," she recited, wide eyed, the picture of innocence, starting to walk again. " _I_ would never ursurp any authority that is not mine. " 

In truth, her decision not to go through a double coronation sprang from a complicated web of reasons. Of course, she needed the Imperial authority as such. The House of Habsburg needed it. If it was given to another family, then, no matter how old fashioned a beast the Holy Roman Empire was, all the realms she did rule - the Austrian heartlands, Bohemia, Hungary, Moravia, and all the other principalities her ancestors had bound to their crowns - would never be safe within in it. And her husband, whom she'd fallen in love with when she was a child of eight and he a youth of fourteen first coming to the Viennese court, whom she had fought for and taken in marriage despite her father's advisers grumbling about his lack of land and army, her husband was that singular rarity of men: one who acknowledged a woman's ability to rule and was content to let her do it, instead of considering himself more suited to the task by virtue of being male. "You were born for it, Mitz," he said, and instead spent his time at using the talent God had given him, for trade and wealth. He was sneered at and ridiculed for this by many in her realm and in all of Europe, as she well knew. What kind of a man, they said, let a woman rule? What kind of husband allowed his wife supreme authority? What kind of noble dirtied his hands at earning money? 

Now he would be Emperor, and they would all have to bow before him. She wanted to give him this. She also knew that these same people ridiculing him found it easier to stomach following orders if they could at least pretend that they were coming from a man. 

None of which was this man's business. _He_ would not accept orders from either man or woman, he'd made that much clear. When her usurping Bavarian cousin had been the Emperor he and the French had put on the Imperial throne, Friedrich had not bothered to bow to him, either. 

"How laudably modest of you. Why then fight for Silesia at all?"

"It is not a Salic land, cousin. But I can see how you would get confused about borders."

"True; I consider them drawn in pencil rather than with ink, and thus flexible to an artist's creative decision, if inspiration strikes," he retorted, unperturbed. "You've accepted my own creative decision in this regard once, Your Highness. Why not do so again?"

Annoyingly, her common sense told her he wasn't wrong. At least for now. Traun really couldn't be everywhere at once, and the rest of her army hadn't done as well against Friedrich as she'd hoped they would. Besides, she could count. One of the reasons why she had always been good at gambling was that she knew when to quit and wait for another game, instead of continuing endlessly on a winning streak until it had become a losing streak again. 

Still, it wouldn't do just to hand him a truce on a golden platter. "I believe you referred to me as an Austrian housewife once, your grace," she said. "This housewife is not in the business of giving something for nothing. Alas, short of my own property, I do not see what it is you can give me." 

There was something, and he knew it, otherwise he wouldn't have brought up her husband's coronation. But she wanted him to say it first. 

The September sun highlighted the lines in his face. He was just a few years older than her, in his early thirties, but there was nothing youthful left in him anymore. He looked like a middle aged man who had put on an inappropriately young costume when he turned towards her. 

"There is peace, but I can see that it is not enough for you, oh most Christian sovereign. Well, I _am_ Margrave of Brandenburg, and as such prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire. If I were to add my vote to your husband's ascension, he would be proclaimed Emperor unanimously. It does make for a better story in the annals." 

The annals didn't concern her. No more Prussia-supported rival Emperors did. For now, the House of Wittelsbach had accepted her bargain, but she wouldn't put it beyond them, or some of the other German noble houses, to seek out French support and declare this most recent election null and void, proposing themselves instead. Singing the old tune again, that the House of Habsburg had ended with her father, that her husband, being not even a true German but a prince of Lorraine, could never be truly Emperor, and that, as ever, she was a woman. 

"In the interests of a better story," she said, "I might favor such a solution. But you'll forgive me if a belated vote in an election that has already taken place seems a paltry price to pay for such a precious thing as peace. Why don't you make it a more permanent acknowledgment by taking your oath of fealty to my husband as Emperor in Frankfurt, Monsieur, taking your place among the other German princes?"

He grimaced slightly. "Attend the most boring and excruciating of all medieval ceremonies? That would be a true sacrifice, and I'd prefer campaigning almost every time, but... whatever you might think, I _am_ a responsible ruler. Let us allow our subjects some peace for a while, Madame, you and I." 

_Until you break it_ , Maria Theresia thought. _But the next time, I'll be ready. With more allies. You could bet on a great many greedy princelings supporting you against a mere Archduchess and Queen of Hungary. You'll find there will be far fewer willing to go up against the Empress._

"Let's," she said, and gave him her most gracious smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Footnote: Near the end of the Second Silesian War between her and Friedrich II, Maria Theresia did meet Wilhelmine, Friedrich's favourite sister, at Emskirchen en route to her husband's coronation in Frankfurt, but not Friedrich himself, who was busy fighting her troops near Soor at that time. (The meeting did make Friedrich furious.) However, when he not too much later made peace (for the time being) with Maria Theresia, the conditions were as outlined in this chapter.


	3. Schweidnitz, 1762

It seemed the worst of endings. There had been some hope during the last winter, when his spies had told him that the Tsarina Elisaveta was ill; her nephew and presumed successor was possibly the greatest admirer Fritz had in the entirety of Europe, and had never made a secret of the fact. If Elisaveta had died, the Russians would have changed sides. He could have dealt with both the Austrians and the French under these conditions.

  
But Elisaveta had recovered, and then fate, proving she was as much a bitch as the three women leading the war against him, had refused to grant Fritz the death in battle he'd sought as a last resort. _That_ at least would have been a fitting final note. A heroic death after having held out against overwhelming odds for nearly seven years.

Apparently he was just too good at surviving. When surrender had become inevitable, he'd offered to resign, making his younger brother Heinrich regent for their nephew, that useless boy. That, too, had not been granted to him.

 _No_ , Heinrich had said, and not for the first time, it struck Fritz that talking to Heinrich felt like holding a conversation with a mirror. _You are the architect of our miseries, brother. You are so very good at taking credit for all successes. Now be the single actor on this sorry stage as well when the curtain falls._

They were so very good at hating, Heinrich and he.

And yet his brother, who had fought for him on the field and against him in that most treacherous of battles, the battle of the heart, was not his most enduring and intimate of enemies, the enemy he would surrender to today. That was her. The Viennese housewife, the diaper-smelling birthing machine, superstitious pope-worshipping maenad and apostolic bitch extraordinaire: Maria Theresia.

"Maria Theresia, by the Grace of God," the Herald announced, "Empress of the Romans, Queen of Hungary, of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, of Croatia, of Slavonia, of Galicia, of Lodomeria, etc.; Archduchess of Austria; Duchess of Burgundy, of Styria, of Carinthia and of Carniola; Grand Princess of Transylvania; Margravine of Moravia; Duchess of Brabant, of Limburg, of Luxemburg, of Guelders, of Württemberg, of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Milan, of Mantua, of Parma, of Piacenza, of Guastalla, of Auschwitz and of Zator; Princess of Swabia; Princely Countess of Habsburg, of Flanders, of Tyrol, of Hainault, of Kyburg, of Gorizia and of Gradisca; Margravine of Burgau, of Upper and Lower Lusatia; Countess of Namur; Lady of the Wendish Mark and of Mechlin; Duchess of Lorraine and Bar, Grand Duchess of Tuscany."

They were in the new fortress he had built when taking this town from her the first of several times. It must have taken her weeks to come here, from Vienna. Supposedly, she'd been a good equestrian once, but she was no longer young, and had to travel by stately carriage through several war zones. When he'd asked for an imperial presence for his surrender, he hadn't actually expected her to follow suit; he'd thought she'd send her husband for this at least. But then, she'd never avoided taking over men's business if anyone gave her the slightest chance to.

"Friedrich, by the Grace of God, Prince Elector of Brandenburg, King of Prussia."

Not that many titles, were there. But that was the point. He'd taken a tiny realm, no more than three million inhabitants, and yes, father, a standing, modern army, and made it into a power to rival France, England, and that creaky, rotten Empire she laid claim to. He'd done it with willpower, brains, and yes, father, a well-filled treasury. But he had done what no-one else on this whole continent could have done, and certainly not you, my brothers, any of you, including Heinrich. And he'd succeeded. Until now.

He had thought it would hurt more, standing in front of this plump woman who was about to take his life's purpose from him. But then, it wasn't much of a life by now anymore anyway, was it. Not with everyone he'd lost.

  
Sometimes he wished he'd believe in her kind of superstitions. Then he would at least have the hope of seeing them again. Katte. Fredersdorf. His mother. Wilhelmine. Dead and gone, forever, and they had promised each other not to die, never to leave each other for good, all through their miserable childhood. At the end, she, too, had deserted him, his sister, surrendered to the torments her body was inflicting on her, as he was surrendering now.

He spoke the words. Maria Theresia took the ceremonial sword he carried. He had prepared a quip, a warning for her about sharp edges, but she actually knew how to handle it. He dimly recalled that the first of her coronations, the one in Hungary, had supposedly involved her drawing a sword as well, on horseback, no less.

"I am glad that this long misery has ended, God be praised, and sorry it could not have been sooner" she said, in Latin, because the Habsburgs loved to show off like that.

"It could have been," he replied. HIs own Latin was rusty, but then, he'd learned the language not from some convenient Jesuit but in secret, with his father kicking and beating both him and his teacher once the late Friedrich Wilhelm had found out. "In fact, it could have been avoided altogether, if you had not rallied several countries behind you to bring down one single man."

She lifted her chin. "I recall making defensive alliances, your grace. You were the one who chose to trigger them by invading Saxony."

Such butter wouldn't melt in her mouth hypocrisy had always been galling about her. She had known exactly what she was doing when overturning several centuries of political tradition and the one feud all of Europe had been sure would never change by making France her ally, and she'd found a willing accomplice in that country's highest-ranking whore, the Marquise de Pompadour, favourite of his supreme uselessness Louis XV, and then another one in the Russian bastard on the throne, Elisaveta. He'd _had_ to react then; he couldn't wait for the league of petticoats to bring him down.

Well, they had brought him down now, anyway. And it had been his misfortune to be cursed with a sense of humor; he could see the irony. Surviving his father, surviving countless battles and winning most of them, surviving his treacherous body plaguing him with gout before he'd reached his mid thirties, only to be defeated by a woman whom no one ever would call great, which was what they'd already begun to call him, before this last disaster.

"Indeed I did, Madame," he said, and gave her a mirthless smile. "I would not wish to inconvenience a lady, and it would have been most inconvenient to your plans if I had remained peaceful in Prussia, wouldn' it? Come now. Whom can you tell the truth to, if not your worst enemy?"

She regarded him thoughtfully. "You were that," she said slowly. "But not any longer."

"Because you have such a forgiving nature?" he asked scornfully.

"Because I found worse enemies, cousin, and I think you have, too. Death and time."

He rarely wished violence on a woman, but now he could have slapped her; at the very least shaken her out of her safe, coddled existence.

"What would _you_ know of death? Everyone who ever died for your rule died far away from you."

At last, he'd made her angry. The full lips pursed, her eyebrows drew together, and her voice, that trained to be pleasant, melodious voice sank into a vicious hiss.

"I have given birth sixteen times. I could have died each time, for while God has blessed me with a good constitution, that is a cross which every woman bears. Four of my children did die, two before they could walk, and you know when they died? In that cursed year you chose to celebrate your ascension to the throne by invading my country, and you _dare_ ask me what I know of death!"

It jolted him. Life during these last few years had resembled nothing so much as a rainsoaked battlefield, an endless struggle not to drown in mud and blood, with everything he'd been clinging to to keep himself afloat - the conviction of his destiny, the few people he loved, the galvanizing fury at seeing his life's work endangered - steadfastly eroded or taken away. There were only two things that had stopped him from shooting himself once it was apparent that death in combat would not be on the cards.

 _I die for you with a thousand joys._ He'd been so young then, so ignorant, in retrospect, but he'd known even while hearing them that if the man you loved died with these words on his lips, you owed him to somehow earn them; to become worthy of that love, that belief, by changing the world through your survival. That was one of his reasons not to commit suicide, the noble one. Less noble but no less true was the other. If despite all his reasoning and doubts there turned out to be a God and an afterlife, why then his father was in hell. And once Fritz died, he'd join him there. He had become too much his father's son not to. And that was one reunion he was assuredly not looking forward to.

Now, though, with this woman hissing at him, he discovered a third reason. She was so blazingly alive, her anger as visceral as if they were still young. If she could be thus, through sixteen children and, granted, miseries of her own , if she could still command the world's stage and manage to shape events, why then he could not slink off and allow himself to be consumed by melancholy in some exile. He owed it to himself to defeat her. He owed it to her. This was a defeat for him, granted. But then, he'd defeated her soundly at the very start of their enmity and had never expected her to do anything about it but to weep prettily , and, this he would readily grant her, she had reversed these expectations quite thoroughly. He could hardly do less.

"I apologize," he said. She took a step back.

"I must have misheard you," she said slowly.

"No, truly," Fritz replied. "I apologize. It was a foolish question. And whatever you might think of me, Madame, admit that I have ever tried not to be a fool."

Wariness entered her eyes. Yes, she did know him, or at least knew him well enough to sense his spirits were being revived now, and what this might mean. Oh yes, their paths would cross again.

"You tried," she allowed, and unbelievably, the pious housewife on the throne made a joke. "I shall not venture a guess as to whether you succeeded."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Footnote: Whether not the death of the Tsarina Elizabeth and the ascension of his admirer Peter III to the Russian throne saved Friedrich II from losing the Seven-Years-War is still a matter of some debate; he certainly believed it did. Consequently, this chapter explores what would have happened if Elizabeth had lived that crucial year longer.


	4. Neisse,  1769

She had fought against this meeting for a long time, probably before it ever entered Joseph's head. After all, Maria Theresia knew her son. Her oldest son, but her fourth child, born after the first of his sisters had already died, Joseph whom she had carried under her heart while inheriting a realm which everyone then tried to take away even before Joseph was born. Starting with the man Joseph had chosen as the monarch to emulate more than any other.

"You don't understand, Mama", Joseph had said. "Of course I feel the wrong he did us. And I have no intention of conceding anything to him. But don't you see what he did for his country? How can one not wish to do likewise?"

Easily, Maria Theresia thought. By wishing to emulate one's mother instead. Or, if a woman absolutely would not do, one's father.

It was August now, August as it had been when the love of her life had died, three years ago, taking half of her heart and all of her joy with him. And this was the month Joseph chose to meet the worst enemy she ever had. Whose writings he had read as a boy, whose deeds he had begged his teachers to tell him about, whose habit of wearing a simple uniform in public he imitated. She supposed she could count herself lucky Joseph preferred the cello to the flute.

"Nobody makes their parents into their heroes, Mitz," Franz Stephan had declared when she'd complained to him about this, the two of them lying in bed as they did even after three decades together, to the amusement of the court. She'd advised all her married daughters to insist on sharing a bed with their husbands, no matter what the courtiers thought. It was the only time one could spend truly alone with each other, and learn to know each other in ways far more than the flesh. But Franzl was now gone, leaving her with her son who had no intention of following his father's example, who was burning to rule instead, not like she did, but like her enemy did. If she didn't stop him, Joseph would change every law of her realms, overnight, regardless of whether the people truly wanted that change or not. He had ideas about everything from school books to corsets, which really were no concern of his, or any man's.

"They are detrimental to a woman's health, Your Grace, and ought to be forbidden," her know-it-all son had declared.

"I have survived them for five decades now, by your leave," Maria Theresia had snapped. "There will be no laws about corsets as long as I am still alive."

Still. At least trying to govern the realm with her infuriating son who had cleverness without wisdom gave her a reason to get out of bed each morning. For all that she argued with him, she would not see him come to ruin any more than she would allow the empire come to ruin. For that reason, she'd decided to join him and his Prussian idol in the Silesian town of Neisse. This prospect, of course, horrified her son.

"How is the King to take me seriously if I bring my mother along like a callow school boy?"

"You are not bringing your mother. The Empress has decided to join a meeting of monarchs. A meeting, so you kept telling me, that somehow will be quintessential for the future peace and prosperity of everyone's realms."

So here she was, in the prince bishop's residence, which had been chosen as a sufficiently neutral and yet dignified ground. For a proper meeting between an Emperor, an Empress and a King who was also a prince of their Empire, there would have been endless preparations necessary and complicated protocols to be observed. Which was why she and Joseph were not travelling in an official capacity. They were travelling as the Count and the Dowager Countess von Falkenstein.

It was noon, and despite the flimsy pretense, none of them had come alone. She had brought some ladies to attend her, Joseph some of the younger noblemen who, like him, were burning to meet the great hero, the Solomon of the North who'd faced down three great European powers and won.

 _Don't be bitter, Mitz_ , Franzl's voice whispered in her mind. _It doesn't suit you._

She missed him so much she could scream. Would it ever get better?

Friedrich, it seemed, was already present. Of course he was. They were on his - stolen - territory, after all. If he'd been alone, undoubtedly Joseph would have rushed upstairs to meet him, never mind imperial decorum. As she was present, they all met in the Prince Bishop's grand salon after she'd had a chance to change her travelling clothes. She didn't really care how she looked, not anymore, but for this: she'd never face her enemy looking at less than whatever best she could still manage, and besides, the waiting did him good.

As she didn't intend to push her son too far, she let him have the first word.

"Count Falkenstein, Your Majesty," the Prince Bishop intoned, and Joseph looked for a moment as if he wanted to embrace the King before remembering he was, officially, not a fellow monarch able to take such a liberty, but a simple Austrian nobleman. So he inclined his head instead.

"It is a joy and an honor to meet you, You Royal Highness."

He, her enemy, was smaller than Joseph and under his wig was probably grey of hair by now, if his eyebrows were anything to go by. Against her will, she remembered Prince Eugene, everyone's military hero when she was a girl, who'd looked ancient to her young eyes and had never needed her father's title to be the true power behind the throne, at least until his mind had started to go.

"The honour is all mine, Your Grace."

For all his flaws, and as a mother, she could list every single one, Joseph did have a keen sense of duty. He must have wished to whisk the King away and have his cherished conversation with him undisturbed, yet he contained himself, and instead brought the King to her.

"Allow me to introduce my mother, the Dowager Countess of Falkenstein."

"Madame," the King said, took her hand and kissed it, before continuing sardonically, "this is one pleasure I was sure never to have."

Before she could stop herself, she replied: "And here I thought nothing could surprise _you_ , Your Grace. It is good to know some of us mere mortals can still manage."

"I never took you for a mere anything...Countess."

Joseph hastily intervened with some pleasantries about how well Neisse and the - stolen - farming lands around it were doing. He was tense, as if expecting her to scratch the King's face, or, conversely, embarrass him by not being up to conversation with the man styling himself a philosopher king. Time to teach him another lesson, Maria Theresia thought, signalled to her ladies and then turned once more towards the King.

"As we are your guests," she said in her most agreeable manner, "I have brought you a present, your highness."

He wasn't quite tactless enough to ask out loud whether it was poison, but you could tell this was what he was thinking as one of her ladies in waiting handed her two velvet-clad boxes.

"Chocolate," Maria Theresia said blandly. It hadn't been easy to transport in August; the drinking chocolate was no problem, but the exquisite cold creations from her favourite cook had needed a lot of straw, some water bottles and an extra box to protect them. "I am told all the hardships your grace has been suffering from have left their mark. Being somewhat familiar with both hardship and age myself, I can tell you our Viennese chocolate will sweeten any disposition. For a while."

It had the benefit of being true; after sixteen children, she felt entitled to indulge herself with chocolate whenever she wanted to, and she did recommend it to people she actually liked if they suffered from distress of any kind, or needed to focus despite being worn out. But of course presenting him with it was the result of another calculation as well. It was hard to keep up an image of Spartan masculine dignity while simultaneously putting delicious melting pastry in one's mouth.

"You're too kind, Countess," he said, and slowly smiled at her. You could tell he didn't smile very often, not any more; the curves of his mouths went naturally downward, with deep lines cut into his face. She imagined the same was starting to be true of her as well. "Allow me to share your present with the young people here, though; they still have their life ahead of them."

Meaning Joseph should be the one to nibble delicacies in public. She found herself annoyed, impressed and amused at the same time. Well, she'd never denied his wiliness. But she was not actually here to undercut her son. She was here to keep him from being played for a fool.

"How very thoughtful of Your Majesty. But if you will forgive a mother's boast, our young here are already wise beyond their years. We old folk, on the other hand, do need the boon of sugar now and then to keep up with the world, I don't mind admitting. Come now. If both of us took this dark gift the Americas have given our old world at the same time, would such a shared meal not be in the spirit of reconciliation our people most urgently hope for?"

Being a woman meant, among so many other things, that you could admit to weaknesses, be playful and emotional in public every now and then without this being taken as anything but feminine and thus charming. As long as you had established your strength first. Furthermore, she'd just equated her weaknesses with his, and by accepting, he would admit to it. If he now refused, he would not just look rude, which of course he had been blithely unconcerned with in the past, but boorish, and she did believe he minded that. When she'd come to the throne, she'd had the chance to read all those secret dispatches Seckendorff, her father's ambassador to the Prussian court, had written about the most famous boor of Europe, and the way he bullied his son.

"Let me doubt, Madame, that you need any additional help to keep up with anything, any more than I do. But far be it from me to be an ungrateful host. Very well. Let us share your gift."

When she handed him Maitre Sacher's artful creation after having broken off a piece, their fingers touched; he was not wearing gloves, and in this heat, neither did she. Suddenly it struck her that she hadn't eaten with anyone in public since Franzl had died. She'd left that part of the ceremonial duties of rulership to her children, sons and daughters both. The memory of that last meal was as painful as ever, and yet, right now, it was not clad in the grey despair that had engulfed her ever since. Instead, she felt alert and alive. In the presence of this enemy, she could not afford to be anything else.

She found him regarding her with the blue eyes that were perhaps the one attribute they shared, and the one that was still free of age, clear and measured, revealing nothing.

"Thank you," she said, and meant it. There was reason to go on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Footnote: After the death of his father, Maria Theresia's son Joseph ascended to the throne as Emperor. Mother and son ruled together for the remaining years of her life. Theirs was a stormy relationship, not least because he did model himself on Friedrich II, whom he met at Neisse in 1769 (without his mother).


	5. Sanssouci, 29. November 1780

Winter had come early this year. He felt it in his bones. The dogs didn't mind so far, though; they enjoyed running through the snow. Still, he was grateful to find his study well heated when he returned. The gout had crippled his fingers too much by now for him to still be able to play the flute, so he would simply soak in the warmth and the quiet, blessedly free of irritating people. He ordered coffee, doctor's advice not to drink so much of it be damned. 

When the footman had left to convey his orders, he saw her standing in front of his fireplace. The dogs didn't bark, which was how he knew, at once, that what he saw could not be a living intruder on his solitude. Strictly speaking, it wasn't true that there were no women at his palace Sanssouci; there were some female servants, and before she'd deserted Berlin and him this year, he'd sometimes ordered Mara, the greatest soprano he'd heard in his lifetime, to sing for him here. But a female presence was still unusual enough for his dogs to inevitably bark whenever a woman came near him. They were quiet now, sitting contently at the foot of his chair, while he stared at the female figure. At first, when her back was turned to him, she appeared portly, wearing the black silk befitting a royal widow, which his mother, dead for twentytwo years now, had disposed of as soon as the official mourning period for his father was over, which was how he knew it could not be her.

Then she turned around, her robes shifted towards something bright and less voluminous, the figure grew more slender, and just for a moment, before the flames revealed her face, his heart stopped, and he thought: _Wilhelmine._ She'd come back to him. 

But the young face that eventually looked at him was that of a stranger, never seen except in a painting. A quite familiar painting at that, though, and thus he recognized her. Disappointment and curiosity intermingled in him, as he spoke. 

"Well, Madame, I should have known that you would use your departure from this mortal coil to teach an old sceptic a lesson. So there are ghosts, and you are dead. My spies did tell me you were ill, but assumed nothing more than a November cold." 

Her age shifted again. Now she appeared in her thirties, comely yet unmistakably a matron already. She looked outside, where it had started to snow again. "Such ill weather for such a long journey," she said. "I did not come to teach you anything, cousin. At your age, surely any lesson would be lost on you. I came to thank you."

"For what?" he asked, surprised. 

"For making peace last year when I asked you to," she said. Last year, her son Joseph, taking admiration for Fritz that crucial step too far, had decided to emulate him by using the death of the Duke of Bavaria without a living son as a pretext for an invasion. This had resulted in something the population had called a "potato war", with armies on the move, no actual battles but a lot of lost crops, and then Maria Theresia had stunned him by reaching out behind her son's back to make peace. "I was well and truly sick of war, and would not have liked to leave a realm behind that was still troubled by it."

Truth to tell, he was sick of it as well. Sleeping in drafty tents, getting on your horse when your gouty fingers had trouble taking up the bridle, all of that had become something rather less heroic than faintly ridiculous, and for what, Bavaria? Trust the Wittelsbachs to never get anything right, not even dying. If that earlier Wittelsbach whom he'd helped put on the imperial throne had managed to hold onto his own domain instead of dying too soon, she'd never have managed to make her husband Emperor to begin with. So he had said yes. 

"I was never your enemy," he said now, feeling generous. "It was simple politics. You did honour to your throne and sex. In fact, I've always said that you were the first man the House of Habsburg had produced in several centuries."

It might be just a trick of the flames, like her entire presence here, but he thought he saw her cheeks colouring, and she became the aged widow once more as the tone of her voice changed to icy rage. 

"What a liar you are, even now."

"I did not - "

She began to circle around him. The dogs still remained quiet. No one was here; he was dreaming, or he had at last lost his mind, talking to shadows in the fire. 

"You wanted to be the new Alexander, and when I turned out to be more than a pebble in your way, you hated me all the more for being a woman."

"I do not think you know me well enough to speak with such assurance about my motives, Madame."

Maria Theresia stopped, and crossed her arms. She was the young woman again for whose portrait he had asked in a pathetic attempt to make his father release him from his prison, by suggesting a match with the Emperor's oldest daughter. His father, horrified at the thought of even his most despised son becoming a Catholic, had not budged from his refusal. Freedom had had to be gained another way. 

"The hero of our age," she said, with a girl's high clear voice. "But does this hero who has won himself such fame, does this conqueror have a single friend left? Does he not distrust all the world?" She looked at his dogs, then at him. Her gaze seemed to penetrate the walls behind him, revealing the wondrous emptiness that was Sanssouci these days and nights. Her voice dropped to a low whisper. "What kind of life is this, that has all humanity banished from it?"

He sat in silence, until her outlines began to blur again, and suddenly he was afraid that she would go.

"It is _my_ life," he said, "for better or worse. But can you honestly claim, Madame, that yours has been so much better these recent years? They told me that after the death of your husband, you cut yourself off from nearly all that used to give you joy. You have become as much as a hermit as I have, admit it, save for the function of governing. For in the end, is that not why we continued, you and I?" 

Her black-clad, massive figure blocked him from the firelight. From her expression he could see that he'd drawn blood. Well. Save for that last peace, he'd never given her any quarter, nor she him. 

"Nearly all," she admitted quietly. "But for two things. Friendship, for though many of my friends are now gone, some have remained. And the love of family. It is a barbed bond that cuts as much as it unites, true. But they have made me smile as much as they have made me frown, my children, even to the end." 

Briefly, he thought of his favourite nephew, dead for thirteen years already, unlike that nephew's useless brother. Some of his remaining nieces and nephews, he did actually like, but it was a remote fondness, never once rivaling what he felt for his dogs. As for the dead...

"If you could come to me," he said bitterly, "at the hour of your death, to me, who was your enemy, why, then, not... others? Why did they stay away? Love is not a bond, Madame, cutting or otherwise. It is a pretty illusion with which we console ourselves." 

She knelt down beside him, young once more, no longer burdened with the heaviness of flesh. His ambassador once mentioned she had learned to dance when still a toddler, as had her children later, not just the courtly dances his own sisters had been taught but dances on the stage, in those celebratory opera productions the Habsburgs allowed, no, encouraged their children to take part in. While his father saw only military drills as fitting for his sons, and would have died of a stroke if he'd seen Fritz anywhere near a stage. 

"I came to you," she answered, seriously, "because you never could ignore me, whereas, I would venture to guess, you could ignore those who care for you. Which is true for me as well, cousin. I came to you because there is a debt I owe, and it is not just that you gave me a peaceful realm to die in. It was not solely governing that kept me going, nor the loved ones who still remained. It was the fact that you were there, and I could not allow you to best me by giving up when you had not. Thank you for this." 

It was a curious feeling, looking at her, his sluggish heart continuing to throb, as it would for a while yet, for he was not ready to surrender to death, he thought. Not yet. How could he, if she had not, till the very end? 

"Thank _you_ , dear sister," he said, which was the one conventional form of address between monarchs he had never used for her, nor ever would again. And as he watched her fade, he added: "You were the best of enemies."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maria Theresia died in Vienna on November 29th, 1780, in the presence of her son Joseph and two of her surviving daughters. Friedrich II died in Potsdam on August 17th, 1786, alone, save for a footman and his dogs, in his armchair. 
> 
> They were at peace with each other.


End file.
